“No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other.” Matthew 6:24a
Evangelist Kim (1943)
Water Pressure
Thousands of Manchurians were led to Christ by missionaries in the early 1900s, and many churches had been established when Japan took control of the region following the 1931 invasion. The Japanese occupiers required reverence and submission to their emperor. Christians could not accept this, and many died when Japanese troops attacked Christian villages. It was also a requirement that small shrines be set up in church buildings.
Kim was a Presbyterian minister who preached that no-one can serve two masters: the emperor and Christ. He was arrested, tortured and released seven times. On the eighth occasion he was given the “water cure”: he was stretched out on a bench with his head hanging back, whilst water was poured down his nostrils. When he was almost suffocated, Kim consented to sign a paper indicating his approval of Shinto shrine worship. He was then set free, but he was so filled with remorse that he wrote to the police station stating that he did not agree with shrine worship. As a result he was arrested, put in prison again and placed in a tiny cell. Eventually the police thought he was going to die so they contacted a friend to collect him. Kim recovered his strength and continued preaching. He was sent to prison one final time, where he died in 1943.
The trials that afflict you,
the sorrows you endure:
what are they but the testing
that makes your calling sure?
John M K Neale (1818-66)